Sea Buckthorn
Hippophae rhamnoides
also called seaberry
Fixes its own nitrogen and stands up to open, windy ground — you'll want gloves for the pruning and patience with the suckers.
- Type
- Shrub · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Silver and gray · Blue-green
- Flower color
- Orange
- Sunlight
- Full sun, and it takes exposed sites better than most.
- Watering
- Very drought-tolerant once established.
- Feeding
- Rarely needed — it fixes its own nitrogen.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- April
- Pruning
- Prune in late winter, keep the suckers down, and wear gloves.
- Mar–Apr Bud Break
- Apr–Jul Flowering
- Jul–Sep Fruit Set
- Sep–Nov Harvest
- Nov–Dec Leaf Fall
- Jan–Mar Leaf Fall
- Plant spacing
- 6 ft 5 in
- In-row spacing
- 6 ft 5 in
- Between rows
- 13 ft 1 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody and fibrous
- Working depth
- 12–24 in
- Can reach
- 3 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 15–20 ft across, about 1.5–2× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 20 in of soil
A shallow woody framework with the fine feeding roots in the leaf litter above it. Those feeders are mostly under the outer half of the canopy rather than against the stem, which is where water and feed should go.
Nitrogen-fixing nodules let it grow on bare sand, and vigorous root suckers let it hold a dune together. In a garden that same habit means it comes up several metres from where it was planted.
The habit is Sea Buckthorn’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Generally trouble-free No notable pest or disease problems when grown in the right conditions — one of the easy ones.
Wildflowers, Grasses, Clover
Shrubs, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com